From Intern To President: Leadership Lessons That Compound with Sean Patrick Phelps

Micromanagement gets mocked, but most people are not asking for less leadership. They are asking for better leadership. Jonathan Tuttle sits down with Sean Patrick Phelps, President of College Works and an upcoming author, to break down what “involved” management looks like when it actually helps people win instead of making them feel watched. 

We start with Sean’s path from 18-year-old intern running a student painting business to leading a national operation, then zoom out into the skills business school rarely gives you: real reps in sales, hiring, project management, budgets, and cash flow. Sean explains why old school, face-to-face trust still converts at a higher rate than purely digital marketing, even in a social media world, and how the psychology of sales stays consistent across service-based businesses and tech subscriptions. 

The heart of the conversation is accountability. Sean shares why he used to think “hold people accountable” meant being harsh, and how he rebuilt it into a simple coaching cadence: clarify the goal, compare it to what happened, and ask the questions that help someone correct course on their own. We also get practical on culture, from ritual team events to low-budget traditions, plus the executive shift from jumping in to fix problems toward building systems and training that scale. 

If you lead a team, hire talent, or want a cleaner accountability system without the drama, you will walk away with concrete language and habits you can use immediately. Subscribe, share this with a friend who manages people, and leave a review so more operators can find it.

-----Learn more about Sean Phelps:

1.  https://collegeworks.com/

2.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-phelps-2754782/

3. https://www.instagram.com/seanpatrickphelps/

To learn more about Jonathan's Google Ad Agency for those businesses who spend a minimal of $10k per month in ad spend and want to scale with top 1% Google ad performance:
https://www.revenueascend.com/

To get your very own podcast guesting tour of 20, 30 or 45 episodes as a guest and become the celebrity thought leader in your industry: https://getpodcastbookings.com/ 

 To learn more about Jonathan's recession resilient mobile home park real estate for Accredited Investors: https://www.midwestparkcapital.com/
 

Transcript

Micromanagement Reframed As Coaching

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Micromanagement gets a bad word, but really people want an involved leader, right? They want somebody that's going to coach them, that's going to help them, um, that's going to invest their time and you know energy into the relationship and into that person's success, and they want that kind of mentor. Um, so usually micromanagement, my experience is that you're you're doing it wrong, right? You're you want to talk to your people all day long, all the time.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome to the Accredited Investor Podcast, which you will learn from the world's leading experts, thought leaders, industry titans, and the who's who in business. This podcast provides diverse, high-level, and timely information for accredited investors and those looking to scale their business to the next level. I'm the host, Jonathan Tuttle, founder at Little West Park Capital, a Boutique Mobile Home Park Real Estate Fund, Revenue Fund, a leading digital consulting and fractional CMO agency. Business Cash Out, a Boutique MA Firm focused on service-based businesses, and a part of the funding team of WildFox, a mood enhancing colour leverage. This episode is sponsored by Prestige, the world's most exclusive social networking app. All links on the show notes below. Enjoy the show. Please like, comment, share this podcast with friends. Thanks for listening.

Meet John Phelps And His Path

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Welcome to the newest episode of the Accredited Investor Podcast. And today I have a great guest, John Phelps, who is the president of College Works and also as an upcoming author. Welcome to the new welcome to the Accredit Investor Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Thanks for having me, Jonathan. I'm excited to share my story and hopefully uh give the audience something, a new perspective that they haven't heard yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

I love it. I love it. And I think this lecture will be a great episode because I've had a lot of different operators and different business owners, but you give a unique perspective from I'll let you tell you a story, but like from starting from an intern to now being a president of a major company, and then also at the same time understanding you end up hiring new uh employees in this current environment. And so I think this is gonna be a really good value-packed insights for people who typically just you know struggle to find new employees, and you basically have this amazing solution. So give us a little background about your story and where you're at right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, so I started at 18. I was a freshman at St. Louis University. I was fascinated with business, and I really quickly was disappointed that business school was just teaching me about business and I didn't actually get to do very much or anything. Um, and so I looked into jobs and internships and I found college works where I get to run a painting business. So like, hey, you're gonna have to knock on doors, you're gonna have to drive home on the weekends in the spring and miss parties and um make some sacrifices, but you'll get to run a business over the summer instead of sitting in an office making copies as an intern at a you know large corporation. And um I took it and ran with it. So I I was a pretty successful intern with the company and then wound up staying with the company and rose up in the management roles. And now it's been 20 plus years and um get to help run the day-to-day operations for our whole company. Love it, love it.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So yeah, you said you uh alluded to starting at 18. What experience shows you about business that most college never college students never learn about the classroom? Because

Why Business Students Need Reps

SPEAKER_01 3:23

obviously today, right now, we're kind of the this current environment now where everyone knows AI is coming, but at the same time, college still could be relevant. But what what do you think people could like college students could learn to get to the next level of this current environment?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the opportunity to get actual reps. Um I think a lot like college sports that if you want to play basketball as a professional, you're gonna need to practice basketball in college. And you don't just write papers about basketball and do, you know, quizzes about basketball. So um I think getting the actual reps, managing a project, hiring people, managing people, managing budgets, making sales pitches, getting investors, um, figuring out how to fund something, understanding cash flow, all those different aspects of business, they don't really get opportunities to do it and they need to practice. So you can do that a lot of ways. You can run a painting business, but even their own little startups that they tinker with, or helping out another entrepreneur, or you know, just the the metal, the lemonade stand, right? Like lawn mowing, whatever it is, finding something that you can practice because that's just so underutilized in the education system. I can go out on that all day. Teachers, student teach, doctors do residency, engineers do all kinds of projects, business. They're just here's some classes, all right. Now go go run a business or go be an investment banker or whatever, and you don't really know how to have you don't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah, because the biggest challenges, like I've been done myself for a long time, is basically the things they don't, you're not gonna read a book. It's gonna be it could be the the most minute and details. It could be like, hey, credit card processing fees could go up X amount, or processing payment could be held again if people, some people do online businesses, make a money could be hauled in these PayPal for six months, and you know, your cash file becomes issue. And the current environment now is like you're you know brick and mortar business, how do you compete in a digital social media age where you're just closing relied on referrals, but also at the same time there's opportunity, which I love about which you know I've read your bio and stuff, because that's exactly how I started going door to door, face-to-face, there's a personal relationship. So how do you navigate the current business environment where it's kind of like portion of is actually, you know, referrals, doing the going out grinding, and also using social media and you know, digital assets and even podcasts as like an avenue.

Old School Selling Still Wins

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And so we we do all that stuff, and I mean to be honest with you, the old school stuff still works the best. It converts at the highest, it converts at the highest rate. Well, trust you. The most effective. Yeah, there's trust. Um, it's just it's more enjoyable. I mean, I like I do a lot of work behind a computer, but I don't like sitting behind my computer screen all day long, right? Um, I don't like being in my office by myself and just trying to, you know, advertise online or something. I like getting out and meeting people. I think most people get into business because they like people. Um, and the business that that stuff works. We do our recruiting digitally sometimes. We do client sourcing through social media, um, Facebook ads and different platforms next door is a big platform in the contractor space. But most conversions on those are a little bit lower. Um they're they they still generate a lot of revenue, but they're just not the same as interacting with somebody in real life. So I think whether it's recruiting employees, getting into in person and out in front of them at events, um, interviewing people, um, networking events, you know, or door to door in a business, whatever that is for your business. Obviously, you know, if you don't do home improvement services, then then door to door might not be the right channel. But um, if you where are your customers gonna be and how can you go just talk to them is still really, really effective for our company.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah, and it's always gonna be there. And a little quick question on this regard too.

Leadership As Service And Coaching

SPEAKER_01 7:24

When you were younger, what do you think leadership was? And as now being the president of the company, how do you think leadership is perceived now?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Yeah, I mean, well, at first, you know, I had some, I think uh mostly I looked up to leaders. I I felt like, wow, they really didn't something great, or you know, how did they how did they do what they did? Um kind of like that movie Pursuit of Happiness, where Will Smith, you know, uh uh Gardner, Chris Gardner, that's his name. And he goes up to the guy, like, what do you do and how do you do it? You know, and that's kind of how I looked at successful people was I just want to know what they do and how they do it. I actually got on a call. I thought I wanted to be a sports agent, and I did some internet sleuthing and I found Drew Rosenhaus' cell phone number and called them and said, I want to come work for you as a sports agent. And that didn't work out, but you know, I wanted to find out how do successful people do it, a lot of curiosity about it. Um now, you know, I think it's they're all human, right? Like uh there was nothing to be afraid of. Like ever they're going through the same challenges that you're going through. Um, and really what leadership is, is it's service. It's not top-down command, like telling people what to do. It's service. How do I help them succeed? How do I get obstacles out of their way? Um, and I also uh I read a book early on, um, pretty basic leadership book from John T. Maxwell, Developing the Leaders. Developing the Leader Within. And he talked about like the five levels of you got you gotta permission, you gotta like, people gotta like you and think I would maybe listen to this person. And position was yeah, I think that's actually the first one is you're you're put in charge, like you're the boss. Nobody really listens to you because of that. Um, but then they gotta like you, then they gotta see that you're good at stuff. And then the key is like they gotta get better from being around you. And if you can coach well, that's the part um I didn't know that leadership was so much coaching. And that's actually the part I love about leadership um and why I wanted to be in the role I'm in is coaching. I love coaching. Um, to me, that's more fun seeing somebody I coach be successful than just you know going out and doing it myself. Um the first time I made a sale, I was pretty excited, but over a few years that excitement started to wear off and the sale just became like I already know how to do this. But teaching a new person how to make their first sale, and you know, it's like my six-year-old just learned how to ride a bike a couple weeks ago, and seeing him learn how to ride a bike is just way more exciting than me riding a bike because I know how to do it. So um I love that part, and I think that's a part I didn't know that leadership with so much coaching and service and helping people. Love it.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

And so I because you have a perspective on both of these

What Tech Misses About Empathy

SPEAKER_01 10:12

angles here. So, what did the service-based business world teach you that Silicon Valley, we'll talk about the Silicon Valley in a minute, but what does Silicon Valley tend to miss based on the service-based business typically does?

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yeah. Um, well, just you know, human emotion and and empathy. And um, I do I had the most frustrating experience yesterday. And um, I was trying to set up a new cell phone for my 13-year-old, and we were trying to use uh Bark. So it's like a parent monitoring the kid. And I went through chat. Um, you know, first you got to do the AI chat. They couldn't help me. The AI is like, I think you might need a human. The human is like, why don't you try this? And they try the exact same thing the AI already told me to try, and I've already and I already tried it because it was in the instruction manual, and I'm not an idiot. So, you know, I don't know how many times I spent about an hour and a half, and finally I was just like desperation in the chat. Please help. If this doesn't work, I guess I'll just have to return it. I I want to use your product. So I think Silicon Valley does a great job of designing products people want to use. They know they can find and fund the products that people are interested in having and using, but they do an absolute horrible job in some cases of the customer service side of things and the human empathy and connection side of things. Like I want to be able to talk to a person and I want actual helpful training on how to use their product, um, not the stock stuff. Most people are pretty smart, most people are um pretty intuitive at figuring things out. And um if they're stuck, it's not because they didn't follow the instructions. Um, it's because the instructions suck. So um I don't know, just seeing things interact in a service business, you see, um, you have to kind of look at it like it's always my fault, right? If something's not working, what can what do I what did I do wrong? If my employees aren't figuring this out, uh did I hire the wrong people? Am I training them wrong? Am I providing them the wrong systems? Um there are different tools we need, is there a different process we need to make this successful? Um, because they aren't trying and and they're not idiots. So um, how do we kind of remove barriers and and make the process better? Um sometimes I think Silicon Valley just lets the product suck and like, hey, get over it. It's we're making a lot of money, so we're not gonna make it better. So they get just enough to dominate a market um and then not really actually serve the market well. Um in a service-based world, you gotta, you won't survive.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Yeah, 100%. And to your point, I just had my one of my iPhones. I always have iPhones that crash and I couldn't log into it. And it was my backup one, and my other backup, my main one, the screen's broken. So I use my third iPhone. And it was like, oh, it's security because the other one was updating and it got stuck because the motherboard went out. I went to the Apple store. Like, oh, it's gonna take three to four days to get logged into your account because you don't remember a password. Like, well, I have facial recognition, I haven't logged in for 60 years. And I finally got a text that I was like, do they not think I get there's a security but I have three iPhones as a like as a backup of the phone of the I confirmed everything, here's my ID, like I went in person, like so that I 100% to your point. Like sometimes welcome value, I get those security features, but like I'm in person, two-factor, here's this, everything's on the account, and I have like three days to log into my account. That's a little ridiculous. So 100% to your point. And while we're talking about the VC side, does there anything you learn up from the startup world teacher that you brought back to college works and uh more service-based business?

Startup Lessons That Transfer Anywhere

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, a little bit. Um, and also it was I I went to that because I was so interested to learn new things. I'd done college student house painting, you know, management for 10 years, and I thought, um, I gotta learn more new stuff. You know, I love learning and I love trying out different things. So I got to get into a different business. And I went, what's the most different thing I could possibly find? Um, and so I'm in a business where every single transaction is like a one-time big transaction with a painting service. It's like $5,000 and you get it done once every 10 years. So it's not reoccurring. It was mostly done by via check at that point. So we didn't have even like online payment processing. We do now, but at the time I don't think we did. You have, you know, real employees that go on-site, um, an in-person sale and all this stuff. So I thought I'm gonna go to this tech platform where it was a robo advising, um, financial advising platform. So we were an RIA, um, registered investment advisor, and people would sign up for a subscription, never meet us, and our you know, software would manage their account. So you got recurring revenue, um, digital marketing, never meeting the customers, serving customers in all 50 states, um, and it's just a very different environment, at least I thought it was gonna be. Turns out there's a lot of universal stuff in business. Turns out the psychology of sales is the same there as it is in person with a $5,000 home home service as a subscription that's $9.99 a month. Um, it turns out the customer service is very similar. It turns out um you're not gonna ever make everybody happy. That was a big lesson I learned that, you know, I tried to make everybody happy. Uh I want every person I ever interact with to want to be an employee or customer. Um, and it turns out, you know, that can be very frustrating. You frustrate the heck out of yourself trying to please everybody. Um, because they don't you're gonna have something that somebody loves, somebody else is gonna hate. Like, oh, you got it done really fast. Thank you so much for getting it done so fast. And then the opposite is, well, why'd you get done so fast? You know, that I I wish you would have taken your time. Um and like, what is this a pro or a con? I don't know. Um, and so I found that it actually was very similar, that a lot of the same things that I had to deal with in terms of, you know, customer service, profitability of the business, um, attracting clients, the selling process, they were done in a different avenue of website instead of in-person conversation, um, and Facebook ad instead of door knock. But the essential scripts and processes were like almost identical. Um even though it was totally different teams. I was the only connection between the two. Completely different people with completely different life experiences and different backgrounds in this business, completely different ones in the other business. And yet through trial and error, they both kind of found the same, you know, similarities.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, no, I love it. It's uh psychology. My dad was a he passed away like last October. He was a um child psychologist, and he used to give me like, read these psychology books, it's gonna be great for business. And I was like, and then when I got older, I was like, when I was younger, I was like, I don't want to read this. And then when I got older, I'm like, wait, those are actually great books. No, like yeah, to your point, like the psychology, like human psychology. Like, I love um Charlie Monger, he also recently passed a couple years ago, which he did uh 25 cognitive biases and psychology became more important to make business decisions based on psychology and people's behaviors and how they you know resonate with different messaging. And so, like, to your point, it's it doesn't matter if it's offline or online, it's people resonate with the psychology and the biases that move, you know, move them and make them, you know, make decisions. And

Job Hopping Vs Long-Term Mastery

SPEAKER_01 17:44

so going to the point back to you've been with uh your current position now for pretty long time, you started at 18 and you made a contrarian move from staying with one company for nearly 20 years, and a culture right now in a society now that it's obsessed with job hopping, switching immediately. What actually compounds when something commits deeply to one company based on your experience?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah, um, I mean, really, it's become so uh such a fad of you know, work somewhere for two years, then take that position and go get a better position and better pay elsewhere. And you kind of have to do that in order to negotiate and in order to, you know, maximize your your income and stuff. Um to me, it sounds very stressful. To me, that sounds really um like a pain in the butt. I don't want to move all the time, I don't want to learn all new systems all the time, and I and I don't know that I can really become an expert. And I do think this is a lot like sports. So, like, well, if I'm gonna play basketball or football or whatever, like as a kid, you can have those play a bunch of different sports and develop just athleticism from them. But if you want to be a professional at something, you kind of have to stay in that lane, right? You know, Michael Jordan tried to play baseball, he got he was pretty darn good at it, but not nowhere near as good as somebody who was just a baseball player. Um and he's about as competitive of a person as you can possibly be and a pretty fit athlete at the time. So um, you know, I think having that specialization is the only way you can really um perfect something or or you know, really become an expert. Um so now I get that some of those people that are switching roles are still an expert in their lane. Maybe they're doing digital ad campaigns and they do it for one company and they do it for another and they stay in that same, you know, profession and they're just switching teams. Um, but I see some people that are switching entire, almost different sports. Um and I think that can be really difficult to develop any momentum and and really um I I loved it, frankly. I mean, I've I've had best friends that developed at work where for five, ten years it was the tightest group of people and thought we're all gonna be here forever and and they're gone now. I'm the only one left. And yet new relationships develop and and new um friendships form. And um I still have friends with the old friends, but um now they're doing off and doing different things, and I'm still here building new relationships with the younger uh people at our company. So I don't think it's a um down uh bad thing. I think it it can really be a strength. I guess maybe the in-between um is where you get stuck, right? If you're gonna truly be that free agent and jump to the best opportunity for the best pay, but ex be an expert in a skill, that's great. Um, if you want to be a life lifer at a company, that still works. People don't know that, but that still works. Um, it's the in-between where maybe you get stuck and want to avoid.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, 100% agree with that. It's kind of like you have to like great to your great point within uh Michael and uh Jordan analogy. I'm from Chicago, so definitely resonates. I remember that. I was really frustrated back in '93 because I'm old enough now.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, now there's all those conspiracy theories of like, was he gambling and did they?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Yeah, that's yeah, I think what that's uh that's I think that's probably what uh NBA is like, take a year off and play baseball. Yeah, that was bad. Well, it could have been. They could have maybe won summary, but I don't think they would have like after going to the micro drifting, I don't think they would have won summary in a row. They would have been too exhausted because they were, you know, that's a long season. Yeah, they just look exhausted in the last uh three feet. But uh let's switch gears

Accountability Without Being Mean

SPEAKER_01 21:32

here. We're talking about uh accountability, talking, you know, you mentioned sports and business is very similar. Um what do leaders get accountably wrong based on your experience?

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Well, that was the hardest thing for me to develop in my career. I thought I heard a lot of people tell me you need to hold people more accountable. You're not holding your team accountable, um, you're not holding yourself accountable, you need to hold people accountable. And they told me, you know, the skills were there, like you're you're great at this aspect of Job, you're good at that aspect of the job. But if you can just hold people accountable, you'll get where you want to go. And what I heard when they told me that was like, all right, I need to, I need to be mean. I need to yell. I need to be mean. I need to be like a high school football coach, or at least like my high school football coach that, you know, punishes the whole team if somebody's late and there's sprints and there's bear crawls, and it's and and if you're not puking at the end of practice, then we didn't try hard enough. Um, you know. And I I thought that's what they meant. And I struggle with that a lot. I'm not that kind of person. Um, and I didn't think it would be effective. So um it takes a lot for me to get angry. Um, in fact, I I don't know that I ever do. I just kind of look at it like, oh, there's a problem. Okay, well, what do we need to do to solve it? Um and don't really get frustrated. So um so here I am trying to be hold people more accountable. Um and I researched this quite a bit, read a few books, really try to figure it out. And the word sounds really simple, but the word accountability, um, an account is just like a statement. Like they'll say, you know, you gave an account of what happened, like gave the police an account of the the accident, or in the courtroom, you give an account. And an account is just a statement about what happened. So the ability um to hold to give an account, right? It's does somebody have the space to say what happened? Um, and so if you can weekly, daily, whatever the cadence is in your business, quarterly, go, all right, tell me what happened. Um, what did you want to have happen? So essentially, what are your goals? What actually happened? Is that what you wanted to happen? Um, if not, you know, why why did you let it happen? And um, if it is what you wanted, what how do you repeat it? Um, and just giving them the opportunity to tell you what's going on. So it's not um yelling or you know, telling somebody this is what has to get done. It's hey, do you want to be successful? Yeah, okay. Well, how successful do you want to be? Well, what's it gonna take to be that successful? Um, and then following up in a rhythmic cadence of, like I said, daily, weekly, quarterly, whatever that looks like in your business of all right, these are the things we talked about a week ago or a month ago, where we wanted to be in a month. Here's where we actually are, you know. How do we feel about that? Is that what you wanted? And when you give somebody the space to actually tell you, you know, here's what happened, they fix themselves. They they think, oh geez, um, maybe I missed my goals because I slept in until noon every day. Um, and you're like, huh, interesting. That could definitely hold you back. Yeah. Um, and they become uh they understand why they're failing and they want to improve it. And obviously, if it work doesn't work out, if it's, hey, this isn't the right role for this person or they they need to leave the company or something like that, they also understand why. They're not frustrated because they know, yeah, I'm not cut out for this because I can't do these things. So um I think that was the biggest misunderstanding I had. That's what I'm trying to work on a book about right now. It should hopefully come out by the end of this year. Um, but it's gonna be about accountability and the process. Um, and I've kind of developed a almost an algorithm of these are the questions I ask and the flow chart I go through in a conversation, in a management conversation. Um, and I've really never had to yell at anybody and have had results double or triple really since I figured out that process.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

No, I love that because I think, you know, the listeners, the audience, like the small and mid-sized business owners, the biggest challenge you're gonna have is people. How do you keep them performing at top level? And that's the number one issue I always hear from any business owner, and you're writing a book on it. And so let's dive a little bit more deeper on it, uh, if you don't mind. What is

Accountability Versus Micromanagement

SPEAKER_01 25:44

the line between accountability and micromanagement? You kind of dive into it a little bit, but these are like some golden nuggets you've been shooting out. So sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Um, well, I think micromanagement's great. Um, I don't know why it got a bad rap, right? Um, why would you want an absentee manager that never talks to you and never helps you, you know, and never checks in on you? Um just left alone drowning in the pool by yourself. Like, you know, dad just threw us out in the backyard to swim, and I don't know how to do it. And I'm just drowning in the pool. And um, you know, I think for the most part, um, micromanagement gets a bad word, but really people want an involved leader, right? They want somebody that's gonna coach them, that's gonna help them, um, that's gonna invest their time and you know, energy into the relationship and into the that person's success. And they want that kind of mentor. Um, so usually micromanagement, my experience is that you're you're doing it wrong, right? You're you want to talk to your people all day long all the time. Um, you know, and you should want to be there, you know, listening to their calls in their meetings with them. And you can't, right? You can't be everywhere at once, but you should want to be there and want to be helping them and want to be helping them get better and succeed. Because once they can, well, then you don't really have to be there and you get more freedom to scale the business and grow the business and do other things. So um I think that just don't think not think of it as micromanagement, thinking of it as I need to help. Um, and if you come in with every conversation with how can I help and what can I do to improve this person's performance or help them, their outcomes, or coach them, um, they're not mad at you for like, hey, you just checked on like three hours ago. It's yeah, I just want to see if it's working. Like the stuff that we that I'm helping you with. So most coaches probably aren't don't have a big enough Rolodex of lessons to teach. They don't have enough things to coach and teach, and they maybe need to step and go, wait a minute, you know, do I'm trying to teach people that have better, let's say, customer service skills. Do I know how to have great customer service skills? What is that? What are the 10 things they need to do? All right, now I'm gonna have all these conversations that are structured to coach them. Um, and it's not micromanagement. It's just this is it takes involvement to coach and train somebody.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Yeah, no, that's great gold nuggets there because literally this is the biggest challenge. Yeah, obviously we have the addic component, but like the real business happens, like you alluded to, is face-to-face and the back end of it. And one question I want to ask you here what is the one accountability habit that would immediately improve most teams?

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Um, sure. Um, I think a weekly uh one-on-one and clarity around their goals. You know, what are your goals? Um, and you got to dig deep, right? A goal isn't just like, oh, I want to make 10 sales this week. Well, why do you want to make 10 sales? Well, because I get, you know, that 10 commissions. Why do you want 10 commissions? Um, you know, well, because I'm saving up for a house. Like, okay, so the goal this week is to get your down payment on the house. You know, that's why we're making these calls, that's why we're doing these things. So are we gonna what what plan do we need to have to achieve that? Great, let's go execute. And then we come back in a week and go, did it happen? Do we have the down payment on the house? No. Why not? What didn't get done? Was it an effort thing? Was it a skill thing? Is it is it a knowledge gap? And how do we uncover that? So I think clarity around like why the goals matter and why they're their goals, um, and a weekly cadence of checking in on that is a is the basic kind of table stakes for most people in leadership.

Who Thrives After College

SPEAKER_01 29:28

No, that's great. Let's uh segue back into your current so you've coached uh more than 10,000 college students. What separates the one who thrive after college and from those who actually struggle that don't implement?

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Um Yeah, I think the what I've one thing I've noticed is that uh business actually gets really boring. Um it becomes repetitive, um, and it becomes just doing the same thing over and over again, maybe with different customers or different employees or in a different um line of service or you have a new product or a new service, but uh but essentially it becomes you know, can we get customers and leads and acquisition costs and marketing and all that stuff? Um can we do the thing for the customers and can we do it profitably? Um and do we have you know the ability to put the team together? Um and once you become you know adequate at those things, then it's just doing it over and over and over and over again. Um and I think that the the long top performers I've seen that have longevity to their careers where they continue to build a next great business and then the next great business after that, they love that grind and they were just as excited to go make their first sale as they are their thousandth sale. Um they're just as excited to interview their you know thousandth employee as they were the first time they interviewed somebody. Um and the person who wants something new, like they make a sale. I was just talking to a student like maybe eight weeks ago, or I'm sorry, three weeks ago, and eight weeks before that, he had just started. And like, do you remember when you started and you knocked on your very first door and the person said, Here's my name and phone number. I might be interested in doing business with you. He's like, Yeah. Like, how excited were you? Like, yeah, it was like dancing in my head in the street. You know, I got in my car, drove home with a big smile, like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I've already got a lead. You know, this might turn into a customer, I might be successful at this thing. This is so cool. Um, and he was kind of in a frustrated state. He's like, Yeah, I'm really burnt out. I've been, you know, going at this for eight weeks, and I've been stuck at $100,000 in sales for like two or three weeks, and I can't seem to break through. Um, and he sounded like beat up and broken and frustrated. I'm like, dude, would eight weeks ago, you were so excited just to get a name and a phone number of a potential customer. Um, like you were ready to go, like, mom, put this on the fridge, you know, I I got my business started. And now if you don't make a $30,000 sale, you're like, oh, today sucked. Uh bullshit. And so if you can maintain that excitement and enjoyment of business, of oh, I'm gonna work on the website, and not have that grind of like, oh, we just did a new website two years ago. Why do we have to do that again? And oh, you know, why do I have to talk to the to the vendors again about the marketing campaign? Why do they keep messing it up? It's like if you're always gonna need to maintain these things, build new things. Either get excited about it, enjoy doing it, or don't be in business. You won't last very long.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Yeah, no, that's I mean, something affection, like I said, because I remember when I was in college, I ended up being back working in the mall and there was a uh place called BB. There was a BB, there was Nordstroms, and there was near markets, maybe commissioned based on sales of clothing. And I ended up being a no one salesperson, BB in the United States in America of like 10,000 employees. And I would get expected uh, you know, being commissioned to after the nine ten percent to nine percent if you told a million dollars you know it's a 1.5 million at 10%. So I'm not gonna get expected to uh nine percent. So my stuff works making how to do that. Which I was being the first and company. I got excited about the small one, and I looked at the bigger cool. You know, you know, what that is full, and I wanted like something that was really functional about it. I guess I got a little excited about it. I think that's if you could find a really excited uh constantly improving kind of driver go to work, and when you don't know what's looking, and so that's why I'm gonna be on the people that are like uh like I'd rather gonna be applied to it, and then they just go out there and I teach them and they just run with it. You know, that's that's I think that's the biggest thing. Like if they if they feel like by the board, they just kind of like a file comes out there like, oh, I don't know what to do. I haven't learned this in school. Like, what do you think would make sense? Test it, give some feedback, run with it. And so I just think, yeah, your points are like run reminiscent of what I went through when I was like, you know, in college student. So it's kind of a fun memory there.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

Yeah, my my old supervisor, I still dislike

The Question That Builds Initiative

SPEAKER_00 35:10

from him, I use it all the time now, but um I would he would I would ask him, you know, what should I do? Like, um, I don't know, we're behind on this project, what should I do? Or this customer's upset about this thing, what should I do? And he would say, you know, what do you think? Uh just like you did. And then I would always say, I don't know, that's why I called you. And his rebuttal to that was, what would it be if you did know? Um, which is such a weird question. I don't even know if it makes any grammatical sense. But he's like, What would you be, what would it be if you did know? So like, I don't know. Well, what would it be if you did know? Like, well, if I did know, I would probably make a new game plan to get back on schedule, talk to the employees about it, and we'd stay a little bit late today and show up a little early tomorrow. But I would guess, and he's like, that sounds like an awesome idea. Like, you just figured it out. So just pushing back that past that first, like, I don't know what to do, tell me what to do. What do you think? I don't know. That's why I called you. What would it be if you knew? Um, somehow made me come up with solutions and eventually learned how to do it myself.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

So asking a little more, thinking more, taking more initiative, asking more questions. And I think that's when I'm hiring people, I always say, like, like I have service-based businesses, so like it's gotta be, you know. What's the extra step? That's that's the extra effort to give, you know, the you know, the client the end goal to make them feel comfortable. So you think about how you are at the end, what's the extra step? And so when you're dealing with going, like say you get college students coming in with no those prints, you teach them how to knock doors, close deals, maybe some Facebook ads or run PNLs. What's the very first thing you teach them coming in?

Time Management Before Everything Else

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Actually, the first thing we teach them is time management.

unknown 36:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

We teach them how to how to make a calendar, how to put everything into the calendar, and I how to balance work, school, and life. Um that's actually something I didn't I didn't do. You know, back in the day, people used to have like a binder you carried around. I can't remember what it was called, but it was like a day planner. There was a name.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Like your trapper keeper. Uh what was that thing called? So you had your little your day planner you carried around. I never got one. You know, everybody would go to the bookstore and buy one at the start of the semester and they'd organize kids and put all their stuff in there. I would just go to class and you know, sometimes I'd write an assignment down on my hand and like, all right, read page 50 to 60 and do homework. Um and then I get back to my dorm and be like, uh, what does that even say? Oh no, it's smudged off. I don't know. But maybe I'll run into a classmate and ask them what the homework was. So um getting organized, um, I kind of thought it was thought it at first because I like spontaneity, or at least 18-year-old me did. Um and I thought a little bit, like, oh no, I don't want to be this organized. I don't, I don't need to do all that planning and um, you know, thought even like my girlfriend will be really weirded out if I schedule a date. You know, we should just hang out all the time. Like, uh, you might I'm not gonna call her and be like, how about Thursday at six? Like that's so weird. Um, but you realize as an adult and as a productive, you know, business person, that's what everybody does, right? There's really no way to be successful without some sort of schedule and some level of you know can commitment and consistency to showing up when you say doing what you say you're gonna do. So that's the first thing we teach um how to put fun into the schedule with school and study habits, with work. Um, and because you are restricted by, you know, time. Like you only have so much time. So if your goals are X and your time is Y and they don't match, then change the goals or change the amount of time you have, but we have to make sure those are aligned before we um make a game plan. So yeah, time management.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yep, I agree with that.

Culture Built Through Ritual Fun

SPEAKER_01 39:02

How do you build uh culture? What do you how do you what do you recommend for that?

SPEAKER_00 39:07

We really ritualized it. We do it a lot of a lot of fun stuff. Um so we do in the summer every two weeks is a get together where there's something fun going on. Um there's usually a couple hours of training to start off the day, and then the rest of the day is like let's all go paintballing or let's all go play pickleball or um go to a comedy club or a uh professional sports or concert or just some kind of venue or event for the whole team. Um and then we have quarterly trips. So we take our team to on a trip to road trip to Canada in the summer, in the fall. We do a top performer trip to uh uh used to be Cancun. So I've been to Cancun about 20 times. Do you have any recommendations? I've got you covered there. We've moved it to Turks and Caicos, um, so we'll be in our second year of Turks and Caicos here. So uh we do that every fall. Uh we do California in the spring. Um and I actually just talked to my dad about this the other day. So my dad runs a business in Illinois and it's small, locally owned. Uh he has a couple of car dealerships and it's independent, so he's not attached to one of the big brands. Um and he took his team out to a conference in in Vegas. Um, and he was talking to me about it afterwards about how he went there to like learn. It was a it was a convention for people in his industry to learn about marketing or financing or you know, meet vendors and things like that. Um, and he's like, honestly, I learned a lot and my team learned a lot, but we really learned that we were already doing everything pretty well and that there isn't really any new bells and whistles, and we just got to spend time together, which was really valuable. And, you know, the the energy that we kind of pulled from that. So I think for every business owner, I I I talked to my dad about that. I'm like, yeah, we we I do those every quarter. Like I've been doing that quarterly for 20 plus years. I've probably done a hundred of those types of events. He's probably done one in like 30 years. Um, there's obviously a cost associated with it, and it's hard to directly connect the revenue to that specific event. But um, I think it's been huge for our teams to to bond and work together and share ideas. So we do it bi-weekly in the summer, quarterly throughout the whole and whatever that company cadence is. Maybe it's every Wednesday afternoon, they all go to the golf simulator together or something. But you know, finding a way to ritualize it. So it's just part of the culture, I think is very beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

No, I agree with you. I think that's a different there for most businesses because if you could build a community in the current world we're at, it's like building community, building relationships, building that, because we talked earlier about uh transient, but if you could build something where, like, hey, well, I have this like family. This is my second family here. I'm very comfortable, they respect me. This is where I feel comfortable, I want to exceed like soft or down because they get back and it's a community like a called family, basically. And that's where you add a lot of value because everything looks super digital. You can't replicate that without that you know, personal communication and relationships and you know, like a pickable ball, a racket sport or going out the golf and things like that where it's like you're communicating and having fun with your you know coworkers is invaluable because you'll be way more loyal to that than and from uh you know work from home location, you're like, yeah, I talked in a Zoom call, like hey, we just went out all last week and you do this every quarter. Like you'll be more loyal to that. Like I know that from a business perspective, it's those little things go a lot when people feel you know respected and part of something bigger. And so I think as a lot of small business ours, that's a great nugget to give. Think of ways because you add value to your employees. Might not be a lot of money, but like maybe go out for a pizza night, go out for you know something, uh event.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

I used to play frisbee golf with employees because once you buy the frisbees, it's like free, right? So yeah, um, I'd have a $10 frisbee and be like, let's let's go out every Thursday for a few weeks together and have conversations about, you know, how's everything going, but also just having some time to spend time together. So um there's ways to do it really low budget, but having some kind of ritual fun with your teammates.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Yeah, I think that goes it's I think it's invaluable. It's basic as it sounds, it's something that goes a lot farther. People reach little things like that go a long way, especially for an employee that's just up and coming, like they feel like I'm something bigger. I'm part of something bigger.

Operator To Executive: Build Systems

SPEAKER_01 43:41

And as we move on, what is one leadership habit you had to un unlearn as you move from operator to executive?

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Hmm. Um Well, I think just the jumping in to do it, right? I could fix things as an operator. Um, oh, there's a something's broken. Let me go fix it. And as an executive, I have to think in terms of like how do we build systems to make sure things don't break. And then how do I make sure that the team is trained? So I put a lot more time into training. In fact, we that's probably one of the major changes we've made in our company over the last four or five years is additional training events. We keep adding more. And we we the first couple of times we added a training event, we thought, you know, we're already really crunched for time. We don't have enough time to do more training. And then we would add this one event because we think though this one thing might help quite a bit. Let's try it. And then pretty soon, you know, it's like, well, we can't live without it. Like the results got better, everybody did better. Um, we got to keep that. And then the next year we'd add another thing, and then we'd add another thing. So uh, and now I think of you know how much training there is compared to how much training I had 20 years ago when I started, which was fine. I felt like my training was adequate for me to be successful, but now it's like 10x that. And um and it still continues to drive improved results. Um, we still, you know, see incremental improvements or even full-scale improvements from that. So as an executive, it's all about, you know, how do we skill transfer and train and develop teams rather than just um do the stuff? Um because anytime it requires me to like do the thing, I have to think, wait a minute, you know, what's gonna happen if I'm not here? What's gonna happen if I'm not available? You know, what if two things break at the same time and I can't fix them both? How do I make sure that you know this department can operate without me? This department can operate without me. I'm always involved. There's always something I'm involved doing, but um, I have to try to build systems and trainings that allow people to succeed without intervention. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

For

The Simplest System: Write Goals

SPEAKER_01 45:53

business leaders listening, what is the simplest accountability system they could put in place this week?

SPEAKER_00 45:59

This week, write down goals. Just get handwritten goals.

unknown 46:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

You your team. Um, not even on a computer, right? I'm sure people listen to podcasts or very tech involved or have the technology to put it in their phone or whatever, just write it on a piece of paper and stick it on your refrigerator, stick it on your bathroom mirror, um, in your wallet, in the visor of your car, somewhere where you're gonna see it every day. And just start there with basic. Like I have to do it myself. You know, there's times where I think, you know, I'm kind of flat, things aren't going. What are my goals? And if I write down things, I I don't know if I've ever achieved a hundred percent, but I get real close. If I make a list of 10, 10 things I want to do this month, 10 things I want to do this year, looking back, it's like, oh wow, eight of those like got knocked out of the park. And the ninth one was like pretty good. And there was only one that I kind of drop a ball on. Um, but yeah, just write it down, share it with somebody, and start that process of you know going back out for achieving what you want to achieve. I think we all do that early on when we start something new, but we get stuck in the day-to-day of um, you know, doing the same thing I've been doing, and maybe don't start the week with very clear goals for the week.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Yeah, and to your point, actually writing it down. Like we say, write down that lot of people type it out. There's actually a lot of psychology behind actually writing it out and like the way your brain whatever in the back end of your brain retains it a lot more and makes it more actionable by actually writing it out and not typing out because we you know, we scroll, we type. Right, you know, subconsciously, but to actually write it out, it's actually retains better. So I think that's actually small logo right there, it's actually writing out like for me, like to your point, like I do the exact same thing. I actually write it out. And I researched it.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

I love better. I love researching the the meaning of words. So set, we always everyone says set goals, right? So set, the word set can mean, you know, like a set in a game like tennis or whatever. Um, but it also is like concrete sets, right? When something masonry work, when it's drying, it's setting. So, you know, it's kind of wet, it's still kind of malleable, but then it when it's set, it's like that thing is concrete, it's not going anywhere, it's hard as a rock. So um the writing down of goals is kind of that it literally is that setting of goals where it's like, all right, I've got these goals, they're floating around in my brain, um, or they're floating around in my heart or wherever I think they are, but the things I want to accomplish and things I want to do. And when I put them on paper and I really allow them to set and cure and harden, um, then it becomes like these are you know rock walls, and they're gonna um I'm gonna have to achieve them and and stay within these walls, and they're gonna really what goals do, you mentioned Munger and Buffett earlier, is um they keep you from distracting other things. There's so many other things, and that's the biggest challenge in today's world for me is there's so many things. Yeah, there's so many things they'd be doing, right? There's 75 different podcasts I could be listening to that I want to listen to and I want to know all the information from all of them. There's a hundred books on my list I want to read. There's um, you know, every vacation I want to take, there's so many things I want to do because now we have access to all this information. When it was little me living in Rockford, Illinois, as a, you know, maybe kid, I like all I knew was like I can ride my bike to that park and that's about it. You know, I guess I'll go do that. Um, but now um the world's much more open, there's much more opportunity. So you want to take advantage of all of it. Goals help you narrow in and have guardrails of focus so you don't go chasing other things or the shiny object and go, no, this is what I want, I'll go get it. I heard, I don't know if it's actually truly a Warren Buffett exercise and heard it debated, but he said, write down 25 goals and then cross off 20 and keep the five that are most important, and then take that list of 20 and whatever you do, do not do anything related to those 20. Ignore them like the plague, you know, stay away from them as much as possible. Because if you try to do all 25 things that you want to do, you won't achieve the five that are the most important to you. So yeah, setting them, writing them on paper, making it a hard commitment and um keeping you distracted from getting distracted is super important. Yeah, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

You've been you got in the safe society, you have to be a master of very few things because of a super competitive world. So honey, things you're good at, passion about like put the effort and you excel at a lot better to me, a little bit everywhere and spreading out to focus on a few things and doubling down, tripling down, and becoming a master of craft. I 100% agree with that. And one last question before we wrap this

Changing Views On AI Timelines

SPEAKER_01 50:43

up. What is one belief you've had strongly for five years ago that you've since changed your mind on?

SPEAKER_00 50:49

So this is relatively new, and I don't know if this belief is like solidified, but um I thought five years ago that AI and technology was going to continue to rapidly, you know, iterate like it has. But I really kind of thought that like we'd be in, you know, flying cars and have robots everywhere pretty soon. Um and now I'm like, this takes a while, right? This stuff takes a while. They don't just like invent the printing press and then all of a sudden the whole world can read. Um, you know, books become more uh around and available, but but it takes a while. So um that's kind of how I'm feeling today. That could change in six months if like all of a sudden I start seeing optimists running down up and down the sidewalk. But I think AI is taking longer. Um and I think the people who are waiting going, well, um, I don't want to do anything because I don't know. Um and AI is just gonna do it all anyway, um, I think they're gonna get left behind. And I think that the people who are going, I still need to progress and work hard and achieve what I want to achieve because this isn't gonna happen overnight, right? I could still go build a you could you could still build a digital marketing agency that's all done by people right now. I believe that. Um and because I've seen a lot of the AI stuff and it's slop, it's still crap. And the AI is getting better, but I mean, have you ever seen a PowerPoint presentation that AI made that was like compelling and exciting and that you you know learned a lot from? Not really. I mean, it's sort of organized like a PowerPoint presentation, but it doesn't look um understandable or I don't know. So I I'm very I'm less bullish. Um I do think that you know technology is gonna continue to change and shape the economy and the world, but uh it's gonna take longer than we think. Yeah, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

I think uh, you know, yeah, it's still a five years, and obviously you have to be involved with it now, but I think it's a good five years before it starts getting the level that we think it's just gonna take over jobs or whatever that's gonna be, maybe 10 years, 15 years. I think we're still a long way out. That's strategic to be a basic question, and sometimes it's like like a normal person on street would actually know better.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah. So yeah, I mean the voice stuff. There was a couple of years ago, it's like, oh, you can you can copy your own voice, and like within a couple of years, you won't even need to be in a Zoom meeting. Yeah, from that. Yeah. It's like bull. I'm I'm here right now. I'm talking to you. This is not an AI. This is not, you know, my voice being AI'd over. Um, and so yeah, I think that the progress is a little bit slower than we may realize. It is happening rapidly and maybe more rapidly than at other times in human history, but um, but it isn't gonna reshape industries overnight. Um it's it's gonna take years. Yeah.

Where To Find John And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Well, thank you, Sean, for your time. What can people find out more about you and your upcoming book and college works?

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Yeah, so obviously uh I'm on LinkedIn. If you're interested in the college painting business, either hiring us or interning and learning about business, uh collegeworks.com is the company's main interface. And then uh, you know, find me on Instagram, Sean Patrick Phelps or LinkedIn for the personal connections.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Perfect. Thank you so much for being on the A credit investor podcast, Sean. Thanks for having me, Jonathan. Thank you. Hey, it's Jonathan. Make sure to download List and Weekly as I bring the top entrepreneurs sharing their best insights and timely information. Finally, I get people asking me to help them one-on-one. Yes, I can, but it's very limited. Go to revenue spend.com for fractional CMO and business consulting. For real estate investing, go to Midwest Art Capital.com. And those looking to invest or sell their service-based business, go to businesscash out.com. All links are included below. Please like, comment, and share the accredited investor podcast with your friends. Thank you for listening.